Andhra Pradesh Finance Minister K Rosaiah presented the tax-free AP budget for current financial year 2004-05 with a massive revenue deficit of Rs 1,970 crore, in the State Legislative Assembly on Wednesday.

The Andhra finance minister said that the overall non-plan and plan expenditure during the year would be Rs 51,142.49 crore, indicating a revenue deficit that works out to 0.97 per cent of the gross state domestic product.

The fiscal deficit is estimated to be Rs 7,569.99 crore, which would work out to 3.74 per cent of the GSDP. After taking into account the overall transactions of the year, the net deficit would be Rs 30.40 crore. The financial year is, thus, expected to end with a negative balance of Rs 49.91 crore, he added.

Rosaiah said that the annual plan outlay for the year has been raised to Rs 13,291.20 crore, representing an increase of 21.15 per cent over the last year's plan outlay of Rs 10,970.46 crore.

However, the total budgeted plan outlay, including centrally sponsored schemes, is estimated at Rs 15,207.87 crore in 2004-05 as against the previous year's corresponding plan of Rs 13,175.56 crore.

In keeping with the priorities of the new Congress government that came to power last month, the Finance Minister announced significant step-up in plan outlays for agriculture, irrigation, housing, weaker sections and energy sectors. Plan allocation for agriculture and allied sectors has been raised by 42.34 per cent to Rs 933.19 crore.

The total allocation for irrigation has gone up by 94.85 per cent to a massive Rs 4,245.72 crore, reflecting the government's commitment towards speedier completion of pending irrigation projects.

Housing outlay has been increased by 63.42 per cent to Rs 417 crore. The allocation for energy sector has been raised by 9.51 per cent to Rs 2,254.63 crore and the provision for weaker sections (Dalits, Girijans, backward classes and minorities) has gone up by 10.61 per cent to Rs 1,197.64 crore.

Rosaiah outlined the new government's development strategy and economic priorities. These include special emphasis on agriculture sector to achieve annual growth of 6 per cent in real terms, improving farm productivity, development of rain shadow areas, ensuring minimum support price to all the farm produce and completion of ongoing major irrigation projects within five years.

Electrification of all habitations in rural areas within three years, economic development of members of DWCRA groups, implementation of rural housing programme and universal health scheme, achievement of better growth rate in literacy and revival of industrial activity are some of the other priorities of the new government.

Referring to the problems faced by the farmers, he said that the government has taken steps to ensure higher credit flows to the farm sector this year.

An action plan has been drawn up to step up the lending to Rs 11,204.85 crore under crop loans and Rs 1,814.75 crore under agriculture term loans during the year. A budgetary provision of Rs 65 crore has been made towards interest subsidy for cooperative agricultural loans.